


001 - Static

by nervousalligator



Series: Awakening [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Post S2, Psychological Horror, Superpower Byers Fam, The Byers have powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 19:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13577319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nervousalligator/pseuds/nervousalligator





	001 - Static

Jonathan’s favorite subject in school is lunch break. Not because he particularly enjoys slacking off, but because during that one or two hour window nobody visits the darkroom and he has it all to himself. Well, actually, nowadays Nancy would join him occasionally, but those times he would be too distracted to produce anything meaningful. It’s during these hours that he has time to develop more of his personal work rather than school assignments. After school he always has to pick up Will and El or go grocery shopping or start dinner because his mom is working late again. This is one of the few retreats he allows himself where he can just focus on what he loves.

He brings his lunch but forgets about it halfway, too absorbed by the adjusting and dodging and burning and hmm a little too blown out over the face let’s do another piece. Not even the constant noise on the radio mixed in with bad-reach static can annoy him today. He’s working on pictures he took during the summer when most of the family finally found time to spend together. There’s pictures of his blushing mother and Will laughing, Nancy smiling and sticking out her tongue at him, a scruffy, sneering Hopper, but more than anything there’s El, looking wide-eyed at him or dancing in their living room or play-wrestling with Will or playing pranks on another sneering Hopper. She finds his photography fascinating and is always excited to be the subject of his pictures, much to his own excitement. El never learned how to be bashful, to turn the lens away or try to hide herself in fake smiles, and it makes for the most beautiful pictures. Every time he brings home new ones she wants to study them intensely and puts up her favorites in her and Will’s room. He can’t really believe that she, a girl with the power to open and close interdimensional gates with her mind, would find something as comparably mundane as photography interesting, but she insists.

A little smile finds itself on his face as he moves pictures along from developer to fixer fluids, carefully washing the prints off before hanging them up to dry. When he’s done he looks over to the clock on the wall and realizes he still has plenty of time to set up that negative for the coming school assignment. He grabs his camera and tools and starts to set up in the prep room. 

The last glint of crimson light hits the camera lens as he closes himself into complete and utter darkness. In here there is nothing but a counter, four walls and himself. He doesn’t mind though, just gets to work like usual, opening the camera to get the film so he can start rolling it onto the holder. He could probably roll it up in his sleep, but there’s always something mysterious and kind of relaxing about the way the darkness envelops him that he quite enjoys. There’s obviously no need to but he always closes his eyes while working, focusing on the touch and feel of the metal, plastic and the slip of the film.

He thinks about El and the blindfolded sessions she’s been doing with him and Will lately in their room, trying to tap into a plane of consciousness they never would’ve thought existed. It’s mostly out of support for his brother that he even joins in on it. Will’s the one El thinks has an inclination towards the inexplicable things she manages to do, what with all the horrible things he’s had to go through with the monsters and hell dimensions. There’s been nothing so far really, but she’s convinced and they’re curious, so they keep doing it. It’s hard for her to explain how to enter that state of mind, and Jonathan understands it’s not only because her vocabulary is limited. Will likes to draw parallels to The Force in Star Wars when they talk about what it feels like. Jonathan imagines it would be something similar to how meditation works and he often finds himself late at night in his bed alone, listening to something floating and psychedelic like Pink Floyd or Hendrix to try and drift into it, but to no avail. What she manages to do is an incredible thing and he’s sure he’ll never quite get over it.

The tools slip around in his hands absent-mindedly. He searches the counter and find the scissors, bringing them up to cut the film from its spool, but for some reason it just won’t…part? He tries again, but this time his hand won’t sink down into the motion. It should confuse him, but somehow it makes perfect sense. _This is something out of a dream_ , he manages to think idly before the scissors slip out of his hands and never hit the counter, instead just kind of disappear out of his mind. Everything is sluggish and his breathing is so slowed down he’s pretty sure he has stopped at this point. He feels weirdly light, like air, like he’s a shadow that could just sink through the floor into somebody’s house, slither between the echoing walls. The static on the radio phases into his conscious, god why is it so _loud_ all of a sudden? It was so quiet and now everything is so loud and prickling all over him with tiny stabs, everybody’s talking and whispering and screaming right in his ears and it grows louder and louder and shut up shut up _shut up SHUT UP_ -

His eyes fly open and he gasps for air.

Everything is quiet. Everything is still dark.

When he reaches out to the counter he finds it’s not there. He can’t feel it. Neither the door. Not the walls, the floor, the tools… _himself._

He can move again though, he realizes. Takes a few trembling steps forward into the nothingness, he thinks. He’s not sure. Turns around, inspects the endless oblivion. Spins a couple times just to find something, _anything_ , to focus his eyes on, to give him a sense of space-

And then he sees it. A figure crouched on the non-existent ground. He hurries over and it becomes clearer somehow. It’s a girl. A young woman. Brown locks are hiding her face, but just as he stops behind her he realizes. He opens his mouth to find he cannot speak, but somehow he doesn’t need to.

“El?”

The figure slowly rises to its feet and Eleven faces him. She looks confused.

“Jonathan?”

As they stare at each other over several eternities and barely seconds, something about this starts to feel familiar somehow. _He’s done this before_. He has a memory of this place even though there’s nothing, even though he’s never been here.

El moves a hand towards him and he moves one of his own to meet her. When they touch there’s a sudden, sharp pain in the back of his head. He winces.

Before he knows it, El’s shape starts to blur out and dissipate. He’s alone again in the darkness, but this time it’s pulling him down towards its gaping jaws and he falls into an endless void. Static noise drills into his head, cutting him up from the inside and he screams himself silent with a voice he doesn’t have.

Then everything stops.

He finds himself panting and aching, lying on a solid surface, heart racing as if he’d been chased by wolves. His limbs sprawl out in every direction as he desperately grasps at the straws of reality and the counter comes back into existence. He heaves himself up and lunges for the door, clawing and banging at it until he finds the handle - as soon as it flies open he throws himself out into the crimson wash that should be the darkroom but is now a living nightmare hell flickering in and out of existence. He's knocking developer fluids onto the floor and stumbling around and his hands finally manage to clamp down on the sides of a table and he holds it hard enough that his knuckles turn white and he can see again and he’s _here_ and _what the hell what the_ hell _what was that?!_

When his arms give out he sinks down, shaking and sobbing to the floor, trying to remind himself to breathe between the gasps and panicked swearing. In the crimson red he feels something thick and wet trickle down over his mouth and when it hits the floor in front of him, dark contrast against the white, he realizes it’s not sweat.


End file.
